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Folk Art of Colonial Williamsburg

In the lobby of our hotel there is a gift store that the kids and I were browsing through yesterday after dinner and they had this amazing rooster weathervane that was something like $850.00! I figured it must be an antique. I took a picture and promised myself I would go home and make one. In my spare time. At 2 a.m. some day when my kids are grown. No, really, I’m going to give it a shot.

Rooster Weathervane by artist Steve Chabra



Today we went to the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum and in the gift shop there was another one of his pieces. This one was marked with a little bit about the artist so I put two and two together. This piece was $850.00 too!



I absolutely love folk art. It is my favorite form of art. I don’t have any antique pieces of folk art, but I have a bunch of pieces by artist Jim Lambert in my family room s well as a few smaller pieces by other artists, and it’s part of what makes it my favorite room in the house. Last year when I was on the Crafty Farm Girl’s Great Plains Road Trip we saw some really great folk art at the Milwaukee Art Museum. What a beautiful building that was.

Here’s some of the great pieces we saw at the museum today.

This was one of the most extraordinary pieces there. A very large carved folk art hippo with a latch in his back that revealed a phonograph player. When the music played, his tongue moved to the music. It was in amazing shape.

And there were the signs for the shoemaker, the boot maker, the optition and the farrier.

Then there were the requisite weathervanes.

And then there was just plain cool stuff.



Maybe I’ll try to make that windmill too one day; it looks like a tire rim and a bunch of old pie plates were used to make them. I have those!

Seriously though, if you’re a fan of American folk art and are in Virginia you should stop by the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum to check some of this stuff out.

Comments

  1. these are fantastic.

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